


it's been said before, your life is worth it.

by babykanima



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, F/F, F/M, Gen, the life and times of allison argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1370185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykanima/pseuds/babykanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're six years old and learning how to shoot a gun for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's been said before, your life is worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> please see notes at the end for trigger warnings and such.

You’re six and learning how to shoot a gun for the first time.

Your daddy curves your tiny fingers around the grip and adjusts your arms and then you’re aiming the barrel at the target on the wall and it feels like you can’t do this.

No, you really don’t think you can do this, you’ll miss. Kate’ll laugh.

You don’t say anything though because everybody’s watching, daddy and mommy and Aunt Kate and Grandpa so you try really hard not to close one eye—you know now, after hours of being told over and over how to shoot ‘like an Argent’ that it might _feel_ like it helps but it _doesn’t_ —and keep your arms from shaking under the heavy weight.

You shoot.

You miss.

Kate laughs.

Your eyes fill with tears and you want to let them flow, want to throw the gun away and make daddy promise to never force you to do it again, make Kate shut up and make mommy take you back upstairs to make you hot chocolate when you see it.

It’s kind of beautiful, in an ugly sort of way and you’re instantly captivated.

You’re six years old and you put down your gun and pick up a bow and you never look back.

* * *

You’re ten and your parents are whisper-fighting in the office again.

You hear words like ‘fire’ and ‘blame’ and ‘filthy animals’ but you’re on the other side of the hallway because there’s a squeaky floorboard between you and the office and you can’t move any closer if you don’t want to be discovered.

You’re caught anyway because your mom goes to roll her eyes and ends up spotting you through the crack of the open door. Her mouth flattens in that unimpressed look and her eyes narrow and you know you’re probably gonna be grounded for this. She moves to close the big wooden door on you.

You’re back in your room before she reaches it.

* * *

You’re twelve and thinking of joining the photography club.

It’s not like you’re any _good_ at it, a few pictures of sunsets and flowers does not an artist make but this is your sixth new school and you’re not even in _high school_ yet and you think maybe if you join a club, _any_ club (you know you’re not smart enough for mathletes or peppy enough for cheerleading even though you’ve got the flexibility but you own a camera) your parents might let you stay a bit longer, just a bit.

You’ll take until the end of the semester because if this continues, you’re going to die ‘the new girl’, you can tell. It’s your title. It’s everything you are.

It’s kind of the most tragic thing ever.

After school you make your way to the room the photography club (‘The Shutterbugs’ the flyer had proclaimed) meet to show the club some samples of your work and they jokingly hum and haw over things like light exposure and contrast ( _and, what?)_ but then they’re smiling and welcoming you in and you’re kind of shocked and happy and flustered because.

Because they _like_ them.

They think you’re talented at something other than shooting a bow or balancing on your toes for hours or using Chinese ring daggers on mannequins.

You run home because your new house isn’t far enough to warrant a bus and burst through the door, ready to tell your dad all about your amazing day and your new friends and—

There are boxes in the living room.

“Sweetheart.” Your parents walk into the room and at least your dad looks sympathetic. Your mom looks like she always does, agitated and overworked and you want to _scream_ , want to ask why they have to keep moving if it’s such hard work.

Your lip wobbles, “But Daddy, I just got accepted into the photography club.”

He squeezes you on the shoulder, “There’ll be a photography club at your new school, I’m sure.”

You bite your lip and go up to your room to pack.

* * *

You’re fourteen and on the Olympic track with your bow.

You’ve tried photography, writing, drawing, painting, ballet, the guitar, the drums, and the flute, all with varying degrees of success.

(the drums had kind of just been to annoy your parents after their refusal to let you go to this full moon party the football guys were throwing, the one you’d scored an invite to even though you were only a freshmen)

There’s a boy in your room and his name is Jonathan and you’ve got the biggest crush in the world on him.

He’s over to help you catch up on trig (even though you’re actually ahead of him because your last school had only had AP classes left over when you enrolled and this one was just normal but you didn’t mention that when he offered to tutor you and you’re sure as hell not gonna say anything now) and he keeps brushing his hand across yours and grinning when he meets your eyes.

You can’t help but blush because _woah_.

He goes through your stuff, laughs a little at the still-unpacked boxes and you grin back. When he finds your paintings and laughs, though. You can’t help but feel a pang of hurt.

They’re not the greatest but they’re not _horrible_ , right?

Who knows, you think, maybe they are. You never had time to try and join the art club.

He moves back to your bed, sitting a little closer this time and you blush again which you really need to stop because it’s not attractive.

You don’t know when brushing your hand against his turned into him kissing you but you know, you’re fourteen now. All the other girls in school have had their first kiss and you get to do it with a guy like _him_.

“Want to go to the movies sometime?” He asks.

“Y-yes.” You stutter, grinning widely, “I’d love to.”

You’re on the last equation when you hear a knock, “Hey, gorgeous.” Kate grins from the doorway. “Your parents say dinner is ready.” Jonathan’s eyes immediately snap from you to your aunt.

You never get that date to the movies.

* * *

You’re sixteen and walking to your car when somebody clamps a hand over your mouth.

You scream—automatic reflex, it doesn’t do anything to help with a hand over your mouth to muffle the sound but it was a reaction you can’t suppress because outside your family training, nobody has _ever_ put a hand on you you’ve never not allowed—and kick and drive your head into the nose of the person behind you.

You hear a _crunch_ and he loosens his arms enough for you to shimmy your way out of his grip but you barely get two steps before he tackles you to the ground.

Your head smashes into the ground from the force of his slap and you blink the stars from your eyes.

Your shirt rips and your hands are scrabbling at his face, trying to scratch his eyes with the nails you’d only recently started to grow out (your mom had bought you a whole set of colors to paint them with and you’d stayed up late with her, laughing at she taught you how to paint your nails and not your fingers).

He screams when you draw blood, looking down at you and you can’t help but sob at the look of rage in his eyes. He slaps you again.

And again.

And again.

You never stop fighting back, though.

You’re face-down with his hands on your throat and your skirt flipped up and you can hear him unbuckling his belt. He’d dragged you behind your car and pushed your face into the ground and even as you struggle to push yourself up, away, out from under him ( _oh god, oh god, oh god, you can’t move),_ your eyes catch sight of the ding in the fender you’d managed to hide from your parents for two months by taking the subway (“It’s New York, mom! I’ll be stuck in traffic for _hours_.”) and you cry at the thought of them seeing you like this.

So weak.

Then you hear it.

A roar of anger, so loud it feels like it shakes the whole parking lot, and footsteps running and suddenly the man on top of you isn’t anymore and you’re being dragged to safety.

A woman you’ve never met is clutching you tightly as a man punches your attacker repeatedly.

He looks mad, absolutely _enraged_ and you’re—

You’re _glad_.

You want him to _die_.

You take deep, gasping, _painful_ breaths as you cling to the woman holding you in her arms. There are grazes all over you and it hurts to be moved even a little, and maybe she can sense it because her hands gentle as she continues trying to put your shirt back together, and you think she’s asking if you’re okay but you just—you can’t look away from the man beating your attacker.

There’s so much _blood_.

The stranger has just started growling ( _what the hell?)_ when the woman holding you shakes you sharply. “Are you okay?” She snaps and she looks properly freaked out by this whole situation.

“I need to go.” You tell her blankly.

“My parents are waiting.”

Then, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

It’s the first and last time you _ask_ your parents if you can move.

* * *

You’re sixteen still and in a small Californian town, about as far from New York as you can get.

There’s no beaches but rather these woods that go on for miles and miles and miles.

It’s beautiful.

You’d sobbed as you told your parents about what had happened in the parking lot and curled into your daddy’s side for comfort. Your mom had gone quiet and still and seemed like she was going to leave you both there when you reached for her, “ _Mommy_.” You’d cried and she’d caved in a second, dropping the phone she’d been fingering onto the table and moving to join you on the couch.

“It’s alright, Allison.” She told you as she wrapped an arm around your shoulder. “It’ll be alright.”

And she’d sounded so sure.

They’d given you a Xanax and put you to bed, refusing to leave you alone once you started sobbing again. You fell asleep with your dad sitting in your armchair and your mom pacing with her phone to her ear as she hissed threats and instructions down the line to somebody you didn’t know.

You’re on the phone to her when you realise you don’t have a pen.

It’s the first time in your entire schooling history that you’ve forgotten one.

You’re introduced like you’re always being introduced and you’re so thankful you don’t have to make a speech or something because the classes that make you tell a group of teenagers ‘a bit about yourself’ are the classes that end up sucking.

It’s science.

Then there’s a boy.

A stupidly beautiful boy with stupidly beautiful eyes who hands you a pen before you can ask (which is weird, let’s be honest).

“Thanks.”

And you smile for the first time in a long time.

* * *

You’re seventeen and werewolves are real.

Your aunt makes you stand and watch as she electrocutes the guy who gave you a lift home from a party once, the one who’d turned the heater up for you when you started shivering and had apologised for Scott ditching you.

He’d actually looked sincere about it too.

Now you were watching Kate _torture_ him.

Like it was _okay_ or something.

Like he wasn’t a person.

You remember being thirteen and learning all about Hitler and then being fifteen and learning all about white supremacists. You remember gas chambers and lynch mobs and wonder if cutting werewolves in half and shooting them full of wolfsbane is any different.

You force yourself to stop crying because you will _not_ be weak again and if Kate says they’re monsters, they must be monsters.

So you go to a dance with a boy you don’t want to like because he’s a major d-bag and end up with the one you’re kind of completely in love with.

He loves you back.

Then your best friend gets attacked and Scott turns out to be a monster and it’s all very quick after that but _Kate dies._

That’s the part you kind of can’t get over.

That and the smell of burning flesh.

* * *

You read Romeo and Juliet in the eighth grade ( _twice_ because they’d moved mid-year and eighth grade was apparently a Romeo and Juliet free-for-all) and you can’t help but think of it when your dad holds a gun to Scott’s head as you cry and beg for his life.

You think of Juliet’s speech and wish you weren’t an Argent.

Can’t your dad see it? You wonder. You’re finally _happy_.

* * *

You’re seventeen and your mother is dead.

The mother who taught you how to kick butt in pretty dresses and paint your nails and braid your hair into a crown.

The mother who tucked you into bed every night until you got to old and told her to stop. The one who brought you soup every single time you were sick and a hot water bottle and Ryan Gosling movies every single time you had cramps.

The mother who, as you later found out, had found the man who attacked you in New York in a hospital under the name ‘John Doe’ and had him killed without hesitation.

Without mercy.

(You can’t help but think that if your mom had been in Kate’s place, with Peter Hale’s claws poised across her neck and an order to apologize, your mom would have been able to apologize properly, even if she didn’t mean it _she would have found a way_ , just to keep you safe.

She was always trying to keep you safe.)

“What _happened_?” You scream into your dads shoulder and the nurses around you look at you with pity, one even has her hand over her heart as if she can feel your pain.

All you can see is the room with a body under the sheet. You want to look because that _can’t_ be your mom.

Not your mommy.

No, no, no.

“ _What happened!_?”

* * *

You were sixteen when a man you’d never hurt, never spoken to or even looked at, hurt you in one of the worst ways possible. 

You were sixteen when you learnt how easy it is to hate somebody.

You’re seventeen when you learn how easy it is to shoot arrow after arrow into your classmates.

Too easy.

* * *

You’re seventeen years old and you wake with a leg between creamy thighs and your hands clenched in your best friends strawberry blonde curls. Your mouth is pressed to her chest and you have to take a moment to remember where you are.

Lydia’s house.

You’d come over late last night because it was summer and you and Scott hadn’t been _you and Scott_ for a few weeks and it had hit you hard.

You look up and there’s a look in her eye that dares you to keep going.

So you do.

* * *

You cut off all of your hair in a fit of anger because you’re _not a little girl anymore, okay_? You’re half an orphan and that’s fifty percent too much of one and you’d never realised how much you and your dad clash without the barrier of _mom_ to separate you but you _hate_ it.

You hate him.

You hate everything.

You hate _your hair._

 _What have you done?_   You think in horror as you look at the hackjob that was once your prized possession. You mother would strangle you if she was here; for all she liked to keep her own hair short, yours had only been cut twice in your life and one of those had been because some jerk stuck chewing gum in your hair and the other had been because it had gotten caught in a rock-climbing pulley.

Life or death situations.

Both had been equally as traumatising for you both.

You call Lydia who actually _gasps_ at the sight of your hair when she sees it and then promptly arranges a scarf around your head, proclaiming that you look like Audrey Hepburn even as she bites her lip and continues to look horrified, and ushers you out the door and to the salon.

When she pulls the scarf off with a dramatic flourish the stylist looks _almost_ as horrified but in the end they fix it.

One color and cut later and you don’t realise how much you look like Kate until you apologise to your dad and notice how his jaw clenches when he sees your lighter hair.

You almost takes the scissors to it again.

* * *

Erica dies and you mourn in private, away from Derek and Scott and Boyd and your dad because you don’t really have the _right_ to mourn a girl you hated for a very long time but you thought she’d gotten away and was living it up away from Beacon Hills and finding out she’d _died_ , right after what you had done to her, what your family had done to her, makes you feel like you should. You should mourn her because she was just sixteen and too young.

It makes you feel like—

You feel like it’s _your fault_ so you steel your spine and snap that you’re not the one turning teenagers into killers.

(you _are_ the killer)

Erica dies and then Boyd dies and you think at least they’re together again.

* * *

You’re seventeen when _you_ die for the first time.

It’s called a sacrifice and there’s no hundred percent chance they’ll survive but the thing is, the thing is you lost your mom and you just can’t lose your dad.

You’d burn the whole world to the ground if your daddy died because you didn’t try everything in your power to save him.

You smile at Lydia when you’re told you need a connection but it’s not her hands that hold you under, though you can’t help but think that if they’re not Scott’s they _should_ be Lydia’s.

Lydia’s whose hands are clenched tightly on _Stiles’_ shoulders, as though her strength could keep the boy down if she needed to.

You feel a sharp pang of jealousy at the view and don’t know who you’re jealous _of_.

Lydia for having a connection with Stiles?

Stiles for having a connection with Lydia?

Neither of them are yours.

You kind of wish the boy in the tub next to you looked as scared as you probably do instead of determined and strong like you _wish_ you did. You also kind of wish you didn’t want to reach over and kiss his blue lips and promise you’ll bring back both their parents or die trying.

Which was kind of the point.

You remember your first day, before you and Scott were _you and Scott_ , when you’d heard a voice on the other side of the hall say matter-of-factly that beautiful people herd together and you think you’ve always loved him, at least a little bit.

First as an idea and then simply as an extension of Scott, like you loved all things about your then-boyfriend (his funny jaw, his lack of brain-to-mouth filter, his best friend, it was all the same). Then, when he’d run back and forth until he couldn’t breathe for you and his best friend, when he’d stood by your side for Lydia, _then_ you’d learnt to love him as his own person.

Next to him, feeling further away than ever is your beautiful Scott. He’s right there but you wish _his_ hands were pushing you under, wish he was holding you again because it’s been _so long._

You don’t know who you want. Scott. Stiles. Lydia. You think you want all of them, together, always.

Maybe you’re jealous of all of them.

Maybe you just feel alone.

You look away.

You’re under the water.

You die.

You live.

* * *

You’re seventeen and there’s a darkness inside of you.

There’s always sort of been one, since New York. Since you watched a man nearly beat another to death because of you. Since you’d watched until you’d passed out and woke up angry that you’d missed seeing your attacker take his last breath.

The darkness that’s inside of you now looks like your aunt Kate.

Aunt Kate who wears the same smile she wore as she tortured Derek then as when she cuts you open now. Aunt Kate who calls you gorgeous even as she carves out your eyes and tongue and locks you in a house and sets it ablaze.

You don’t know what it is to sleep anymore because it feels like you’re always asleep and it’s not until you take to realising you actually haven’t slept in _days_ that you figure out there’s a problem.

Lydia steals her mom’s Xanax and calls you every night at the same time to make sure you only take the one pill when she says and you only get mad once because you realise your best friend probably has better things to do that monitor your illicit drug intake.

But she does it anyway and you love her a lot for it.

* * *

_“Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes.”_ You tell yourself every day you wake up and every night before you go to sleep.

You’re changing a lifetime of family traditions and history but you won’t stand for anything less. You’ll die before another Argent sets fire to a family or shoots arrows into innocent teenagers.

* * *

 

You’re seventeen years old when you die for the second and final time.

Most people don’t even get two turns, you know. Your mom had died only once and Kate too, though she’d probably deserved to die a lot more for all the pain she’d caused.

You’re one of the lucky ones. You got to come back. You got, you got to spend time with the ones you love.

You don’t think you believe in Heaven or Hell but you kind of think maybe all Argent’s would go to the one not filled with angels and harps. Historically speaking, your family is kind of horrible.

Heaven or Hell, you hope that you’ll get to be with your mommy.

You remember New York, thinking you were going to die and choke on a sob because you’d been _so_ scared then and you hadn’t stopped being scared since.

You’re only seventeen and you’re cold and _terrified_ but it doesn’t hurt and you’re thankful for that because—because you don’t think you could take the pain and _not_ cry and Scott always cries when you do and he doesn’t deserve to cry.

Not over you.

You’re not—you’re not worth it.

You can’t even take a _picture_ without getting the lighting wrong or something.

You couldn’t play the drums or flute or write poetry.

You’re nothing.

You’ve _done_ nothing.

“It’s okay.” You tell him. You start crying anyway but it’s not too much, you’re not sobbing at least. This is the perfect amount of tears. “It’s perfect.”

And it is.

You've done nothing, you're worth nothing more than a code you're not even sure will last past your death but you’re in the arms of your first love. The one you’ll always love. And if Lydia and Stiles aren’t here it’s okay because at least they’re _safe_. Isaac is safe and your daddy knows you’re proud of him.

You protected those who couldn’t protect themselves.

You’re dying for your code.

It’s perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> a) so the non-con is attempted in that ally is not raped. she is, however, assaulted which counts as non-con to me anyway but not to a lot of other people (which it should fyi)
> 
> b) ally has very low self-esteem here. i was attempting to channel s1 her.
> 
> c) the stiles/allison is kind of hinted/unrequited? idk how you would explain that.
> 
> d) 100% not beta read! yay!
> 
> come and [ visit me ](http://clintssecretfamily.tumblr.com/)


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